“I think that the people you have showed them to understand the concepts before they see the slides, but we are using these slides to teach people who aren’t familiar with the process and they don’t make much sense, they are all over the place.”

“Belinda has seen the slides and she is a new employee.”

“Well, Belinda understands machines and machine language, I understand people. My point is, I think these slides can be improved upon and I don’t want ‘good enough’ I want them to be ‘the best’.”

“Well, if you have time you can redo them, but we’ve spent so much time on them already I don’t think anyone else will have time to update theirs.”

At this point I went back to my desk and took the 18 slides that seemed to lack cohesion and made them brilliantly simple. I kept all the material and graphics and turned those 18 slides into 3 simple slides. I emailed them to my co-worker who is coordinating this large training project that we are putting together.

“I got your slides, I’m okay with this, they don’t look too different from the others and so you can use them.”

I was more than a little disappointed. I took something that stunk like a big turd and turned it into something that was clear, concise and smelled like a cinnamon bark candle from Bath and Body works. I worked a friggin’ miracle and she said “It’s okay to use them?”

I sent her an email back.

“Have you ever been given a ‘demotivation’ award?”

I’m so tired with everyone thinking things are “good enough” when just a little more creativity and hard work we can have “Awesome” or “Unbelievable”.

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Yesterday, my pal Darren Di Lieto, from The Little Chimp Society website, emailed with some upsetting news. Turns out someone scraped the contents of his website and published it into a 350-page book being sold online for $100. You can read more on this post in Darren’s blog.

This book — which reprints without permission several dozen artist interviews which Darren had posted on the LCS blog — transcribes these interviews word-for-word, including the artwork, and was “published” under the title “Colorful Illustrations 93°C”. The book even includes a CD with all the illustrations from the book, all lifted off the site as well. Here’s a link to a gallery of scans that Darren made of each page of the book, with a close-up below of one of the two spreads which feature the interview Darren did of me (I can’t help but notice the thieves omitted the illustration of the two big gay muscle Daddies, chickens!):

The publisher — one very fake sounding “Great Creativity organization” [sic] — is allegedly in Hong Kong, so pursuing legal action seems pretty pointless, seeing as China has such a sparkling reputation for respecting copyright law. The ISBN they provide — ISBN 978-988-98142-0-5 — is also a fake. You can easily search ISBN databases online, and this number comes up empty.

“OMG! You should totally sue them!”

Yes, this is everyone’s first reaction, right after red-faced anger. Well, let me just grab my wallet and… oh, right, I draw pictures for a living! This means I’m lucky if I have enough money to pay some bills for the next few months, but not quite enough to launch a class-action lawsuit across international borders against a bogus copyright infringing publisher in China.

And here’s a troubling thought: How many more such projects is this “Great Creativity organization” publisher working on right now? Maybe another illustration book, this time filled with YOUR WORK? Maybe filled with content scraped from similar sites, such as Illustration Mundo, or Drawn!, or even Boing Boing? Or how about a lovely coffee table book full of high rez photos scraped off of Flickr?

So what are we going to do?

Several things. First, Darren has tried calling the current re-sellers, both in Spain and Japan, who so far both refuse to pull the book. This makes sense, as there’s not enough evidence for them to make up their minds right now (although I fail to see how or why a bookstore would so carelessly stock a book with a fake ISBN number, and not be interested to find out if they’re selling a plagiarized book).

He then tried locating the publisher, but of course they printed a bunch of fake contact info in the book so that’s useless. The distributor seems to be a company called Azur Corporation. They too have been impossible to reach. As we understand it, re-sellers and distributors who don’t pull plagiarized books from the circulation can be held accountable as co-plagiarists.

The main thing we want to do right now, is flood the web with the truth about this plagiarized book and its publisher, both to avoid any more poor suckers from shelling out $100 to these thieves, and to warn other bookstores against getting involved with these scam artists. You say: “So what if the internet is full of negative press regarding this company and their plagiarized book?” Well, YOU try recovering from the backlash of negative press after search engines yield nothing but red flags and warnings against your company or product.

Yes, the damage is done. The book has been printed, distributed, and is being sold. This doesn’t mean we’re powerless and unable to stop any future distribution of the book, and hopefully of any future projects they have planned.

We need your help

First, please re-distribute this blog post. Repost the whole thing, or part of it, in your blog, with links and tags included.

Next, use whatever social networks and news sharing sites you use every day — Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Magnolia, Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook — to spread the word about this overpriced book full of plagiarized and stolen content. Feel free to quote us, and remember to also include the same keywords and tags in your posts. (Darren’s and my site makes this very easy already, with the little green “Share This” button at the bottom of every post in my blog.)

The result is that we may be able at least to shame these bogus publishers into removing this book from circulation and scare them back into their caves. A public apology, as well as forking over all the monies from sales, would be nice too but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

What else?

The longer term plan will involve approaching the current and possible future re-sellers and distributors with legal documents and press releases proving that this book is 100% full of plagiarized and stolen content, and calling for them to stop carrying the book.

We have a few more ideas too. We’re nothing if not creative individuals. Speaking of which, if you have any ideas and thoughts on this, we’d love to hear them!

I’ll keep you posted, and thanks for your help folks!

When I’m giving a presentation, sometimes it would be handy for a small clock to be displayed at the bottom corner of the slides.

I’d also like a countdown option. Like I can insert an object and set the minutes to a certain length and then put it up on the screen. When it’s done, the presentation starts.

On a separate note, if you aren’t using Office 2007 then you need to start, it is really cool.

My new job is kicking my butt. We are using this new program that uses Statistics and algorithms to predict the future targets of inventory. “We use the coefficient of variance divided by the standard deviation to get the mean.” What? Oh, yeah, I got that. Makes perfect sense. I am always using the coefficient of variance. As a matter of fact I dated CoV’s sister just last week. We had a good time.

When I applied for this job I knew it was going to be very hard. I knew it would be challenging, I asked for it and so I’ve made a decision to work hard at it and to not complain one bit. It’s not my dream job, but for now it is an opportunity to learn something valuable and to grow.

Besides, my dream job of playing Ultimate Frisbee all day, blogging and singing karaoke at night doesn’t seem to exist… yet.

I have these simile’s, metaphors and analogies floating through my head at random times and no place to store them for later retrieval. I’ve decided to use Twitter for them since I can post to it from my cell phone.

For example: She was one of those girls you just wanted to pour into a tall glass and then drink with a crazy straw. Or… His dancing reminded me of the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz” if not a little more rigid.

What is Twitter? Well, click on the link and see for yourself.

Also, can anyone guess what in the world that first word is on the word verification section?

So this Business Analyst job is like the coolest job I’ve ever had, but if I tried to explain it to you, you would totally start snoring. How can Supply Chains be fascinating to a guy who thinks bowling, golf, boxing, baseball, and Law and Order are boring? Well, because I get to work on projects that actually impact revenue on a grand scale. Supply Chain Systems is where it is at people and my job feels important. Don’t you want to work somewhere where you feel like your job is important? TI makes chips that help people see better when they start losing their eyesight. We make chips that go into prosthetic robotic arms and we manufacture over 55,000 total products that are in pretty much every piece of electronic equipment in your house.

So before when I was working in IT I was always fixing problems, where now I am finding solutions and implementing software and processes. I’m in brainstorming sessions and meetings that sometimes are way over my head, but I love it. I look forward to going to work again and that is nice feeling.

Anywho, I hope that you get tomorrow off for Good Friday.

Happy Easter!